11/25/08: Day 31: Sea Day 3 of 6

So, I’m starting to realize my brain has automatically been falling back on what it remembered from cruising: “after two days at sea we come to land.” Only we haven’t. So it is starting to hit just a little bit that we’re only half way through the sea days. The nice thing is it is still staying pretty smooth as far as waves go. I guess I was expecting huge waves like in Perfect Storm or Deadliest Catch.

Today’s notable moments were mostly at night. Earlier in the day the Bowling with the Stars semi-finals happened and Larrance came in first…but I was working out at the time and didn’t see it.

The big moment was the 7:30 Comedy Hypnotism show. It seems like a lot of these shows have the word “comedy” thrown in with them, like tomorrow night is Comedy Juggling or something along those lines. But the hypnotism show was great. Picture Katie Nahnsen (if you know her) doing some sort of “nice mom” character…that was the hypnotist. She had 15 people onstage and really set standards of things like needing to be willing to be hypnotized. As she was putting people in a trance it became apparent who it was working on and who it wasn’t. If it really wasn’t working she would assist them off stage.

There is that part of you that says “they have to be faking” but we had met some of the passengers and knew they wouldn’t just do some of the stuff they were doing. It is hard to explain the hilarity in full so I’ll explain my favorite combo. She told one person that they were very generous…the most generous person ever and that every time she said “money” they would be compelled to give her something of theirs, but she couldn’t accept cash. Another person was told they were the star of the show and every time the audience applauded that person would stand up and take a bow. She told yet another person that they were the safety officer of the ship and when she said “NCL” they would stand up and scream “Man overboard!” and then forget that they even did it. Finally she told someone that each time they heard “Man overboard!” they would think the person to their right pinched their butt. So that was the set up for hilarity. She’d talk to the audience and say “money” in her sentence causing the one person to give her stuff. She’d say how nice it was to cruise on “NCL” making someone stand up and scream “Man overboard!” which made the other person jump in their seat and look to their right at the person they thought pinched their butt. This would make the audience applaud and the final person would stand up and take their bow.

I know it isn’t fake because you really have to be paying attention to every word to not miss your cue. I still feel like I’m not explaining it right, but seeing this type of show after getting to know some of the passengers made it feel less like fake stuff.

We talked with the guy who felt like he was getting his butt pinched and also at one point forgot the number 6. I asked if he remembered anything and he said “Yeah, I remember it all. I just don’t know why I was doing that stuff.”

The best part for me was afterwards when she tells people to let go of all of the things she has told them and they “wake up” she offers a parting gift to one person, and it is all of the stuff they gave her when she said “money.” The look on the guy’s face was priceless. He looked in the bag to see what his prize was and then quickly looked at himself to notice all of those possessions were no longer on his person. Bewildered. Awesome.